Berkeley Folk Festival
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Berkeley Folk Festival
The Berkeley Folk Music Festival was a folk music festival held annually from 1958 to 1970 in Berkeley, California, one of the major centers of the folk music revival in the United States. It was directed by Barry Olivier. The Festival was one of the preeminent folk festivals on the West Coast, predating the more famous Newport Folk Festival on the East Coast and presenting performers, artists, and scholars such as Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Doc Watson, Alan Lomax, Howlin' Wolf, Phil Ochs, Alice Stuart, Jean Ritchie, Jean Redpath, Jesse Fuller, Big Mama Thornton, Mance Lipscomb, Mississippi John Hurt, Archie Green, Alan Dundes, Bess Lomax Hawes, Ewan MacColl, John Fahey, Robbie Basho, the Jefferson Airplane, the Youngbloods, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and many others. The festival's willingness to embrace electric rock music and other forms of what would become known as roots music or Americana makes it markedly different from Newport, with its fa ...
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Folk Music
Folk music is a music genre that includes traditional folk music and the contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be called world music. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, music with unknown composers, music that is played on traditional instruments, music about cultural or national identity, music that changes between generations (folk process), music associated with a people's folklore, or music performed by custom over a long period of time. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. The term originated in the 19th century, but folk music extends beyond that. Starting in the mid-20th century, a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional folk music. This process and period is called the (second) folk revival and reached a zenith in the 1960s. This form of music is sometimes called contemporary folk music or folk rev ...
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Mississippi John Hurt
John Smith Hurt (March 8, 1893 – November 2, 1966), better known as Mississippi John Hurt, was an American country blues singer and guitarist. Raised in Avalon, Mississippi, Hurt taught himself to play the guitar around the age of nine. He worked as a sharecropper and began playing at dances and parties, singing to a melodious fingerpicked accompaniment. His first recordings, made for Okeh Records in 1928, were commercial failures, and he continued to work as a farmer. Dick Spottswood and Tom Hoskins, a blues enthusiast, located Hurt in 1963 and persuaded him to move to Washington, D.C. He was recorded by the Library of Congress in 1964. This helped further the American folk music revival, which led to the rediscovery of many other bluesmen of Hurt's era. Hurt performed on the university and coffeehouse concert circuit with other Delta blues musicians who were brought out of retirement. He also recorded several albums for Vanguard Records. Hurt returned to Grenada in 1966, ...
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Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world. Chartered by the Illinois General Assembly in 1851, Northwestern was established to serve the former Northwest Territory. The university was initially affiliated with the Methodist Episcopal Church but later became non-sectarian. By 1900, the university was the third largest university in the United States. In 1896, Northwestern became a founding member of the Big Ten Conference, and joined the Association of American Universities as an early member in 1917. The university is composed of eleven undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, which include the Kellogg School of Management, the Pritzker School of Law, the Feinberg School of Medicine, the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, the Bienen School of Music, the McCormick ...
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Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement (FSM) was a massive, long-lasting student protest which took place during the 1964–65 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. The Movement was informally under the central leadership of Berkeley graduate student Mario Savio. Other student leaders include Jack Weinberg, Michael Rossman, George Barton, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Michael Teal, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg and others. With the participation of thousands of students, the Free Speech Movement was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s. Students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students' right to free speech and academic freedom. The Free Speech Movement was influenced by the New Left, and was also related to the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. To this day, the Movement's legacy continues to sh ...
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Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career spanning more than 60 years. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s, when songs such as "Blowin' in the Wind" (1963) and " The Times They Are a-Changin' (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. His lyrics during this period incorporated a range of political, social, philosophical, and literary influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the burgeoning counterculture. Following his self-titled debut album in 1962, which comprised mainly traditional folk songs, Dylan made his breakthrough as a songwriter with the release of ''The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan'' the following year. The album features "Blowin' in the Wind" and the thematically complex " A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". Many of his s ...
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Shlomo Carlebach (musician)
Shlomo Carlebach ( he, שלמה קרליבך; 14 January 1925 – 20 October 1994), known as Reb Shlomo to his followers, was a rabbi, religious teacher, spiritual leader, composer, and singer dubbed "the singing rabbi" during his lifetime. Although his roots lay in traditional Orthodox yeshivot, he branched out to create his own style combining Hasidic Judaism, warmth and personal interaction, public concerts, and song-filled synagogue services. At various times he lived in Manhattan, San Francisco, Toronto and a Moshav he founded, Mevo Modi'im, Israel. Carlebach is the subject of ''Soul Doctor'', a musical that debuted on Broadway in 2013. Carlebach is considered by many to be the foremost Jewish religious songwriter of the 20th century. Carlebach was also considered a pioneer of the Baal teshuva movement ("returnees to Judaism"), encouraging disenchanted Jewish youth to re-embrace their heritage, using his special style of enlightened teaching, and his melodies, songs, a ...
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Big Brother And The Holding Company
Big Brother and the Holding Company is an American rock band that formed in San Francisco in 1965 as part of the same psychedelic music scene that produced the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, and Jefferson Airplane. After some initial personnel changes, the band became well known with the lineup of vocalist Janis Joplin, guitarists Sam Andrew and James Gurley, bassist Peter Albin, and drummer Dave Getz. Their second album '' Cheap Thrills'', released in 1968, is considered one of the masterpieces of the psychedelic sound of San Francisco; it reached number one on the ''Billboard'' charts, and was ranked number 338 in ''Rolling Stone''s the 500 greatest albums of all time. The album is also included in the book ''1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die''. Joplin left the band in 1968, following the recording of ''Cheap Thrills'', for a successful solo career. The band recruited new members Nick Gravenites, Kathi McDonald, and Dave Schallock to replace her and ...
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The Youngbloods
The Youngbloods were an American rock band consisting of Jesse Colin Young (vocals, bass, guitar), Jerry Corbitt (vocals, guitar, keyboards, harmonica), Lowell "Banana" Levinger (guitar and electric piano), and Joe Bauer (drums). Despite receiving critical acclaim, they never achieved widespread popularity. Their only U.S. Top 40 entry was Chet Powers' " Get Together". They are often remembered as a one-hit wonder. Band history Background and formation Jesse Colin Young (born Perry Miller, November 22, 1941, Queens, New York City) was a moderately successful folk singer with two LPs under his belt – ''Soul of a City Boy'' (1964) and ''Youngblood'' (1965) – when he met fellow folk singer and former bluegrass musician from Cambridge, Massachusetts, Jerry Corbitt (born Jerry Byron Corbitt, January 7, 1943, Tifton, Georgia). When in town, Young would drop in on Corbitt, and the two played together exchanging harmonies. Beginning in January 1965, the two began performing on t ...
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The Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplane was an American rock band based in San Francisco, California, that became one of the pioneering bands of psychedelic rock. Formed in 1965, the group defined the San Francisco Sound and was the first from the Bay Area to achieve international commercial success. They headlined the Monterey Pop Festival (1967), Woodstock (1969), Altamont Free Concert (1969), and the first Isle of Wight Festival (1968) in England. Their 1967 breakout album '' Surrealistic Pillow'' was one of the most significant recordings of the Summer of Love. Two songs from that album, " Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", are among ''Rolling Stone''s "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The October 1966 to February 1970 lineup of Jefferson Airplane, consisting of Marty Balin (vocals), Paul Kantner (guitar, vocals), Grace Slick (vocals), Jorma Kaukonen (lead guitar, vocals), Jack Casady (bass), and Spencer Dryden (drums), was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Balin left th ...
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Robbie Basho
Robbie Basho (born Daniel R. Robinson, Jr., August 31, 1940 – February 28, 1986) was an American acoustic guitarist, pianist and singer. Biography Basho was born in Baltimore, and was orphaned as an infant. Adopted by the Robinson family, Daniel Robinson, Jr. attended Catholic schools in the Archdiocese of Baltimore and was prepared for college at St. James School, Maryland, an Episcopal school. He went on to study at University of Maryland, College Park. Although he played the euphonium in the high school band and sang in middle school and high school ensembles, his interest in acoustic guitar grew during his college years, as a direct result of his friendships with fellow students John Fahey, Ed Denson, and Max Ochs. In 1959, Basho purchased his first guitar and immersed himself in Asian art and culture. It was around this time that he changed his name to Basho, in honor of the Japanese poet, Matsuo Bashō. Basho saw the steel string guitar as a concert instrument, ...
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John Fahey (musician)
John Aloysius Fahey ( ; February 28, 1939 – February 22, 2001) was an American fingerstyle guitarist and composer who played the steel-string acoustic guitar as a solo instrument. His style has been enormously influential and has been described as the foundation of the genre of American primitive guitar, a term borrowed from painting and referring mainly to the self-taught nature of the music and its minimalist style. Fahey borrowed from the folk and blues traditions in American roots music, having compiled many forgotten early recordings in these genres. He would later incorporate 20th-century classical, Portuguese, Brazilian, and Indian influences into his work. Fahey spent many of his later years in poverty and poor health, but enjoyed a minor career resurgence in the late 1990s, with a turn towards the avant-garde. He also created a series of abstract paintings in his final years. Fahey died in 2001 from complications from heart surgery. In 2003, he was ranked 35th on ''R ...
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Ewan MacColl
James Henry Miller (25 January 1915 – 22 October 1989), better known by his stage name Ewan MacColl, was a folk singer-songwriter, folk song collector, labour activist and actor. Born in England to Scottish parents, he is known as one of the instigators of the 1960s folk revival as well as for writing such songs as "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" and "Dirty Old Town". MacColl collected hundreds of traditional folk songs, including the version of " Scarborough Fair" later popularised by Simon & Garfunkel, and released dozens of albums with A.L. Lloyd, Peggy Seeger and others, mostly of traditional folk songs. He also wrote many left-wing political songs, remaining a steadfast communist throughout his life and engaging in political activism. Early life and early career MacColl was born as James Henry Miller at 4 Andrew Street, in Broughton, Salford, England, to Scottish parents, William Miller and Betsy (née Henry), both socialists. William Miller was an iron moulde ...
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